Massive Waste of Taxpayers' Money in FÁS

Ireland's national training and employment agency FÁS (Foras Áiseanna Saothair) has wasted vast amounts of taxpayers' money and exceeded its budgets regularly.

A new report by Ireland's Comptroller & Auditor General John Buckley, which is the result of a nearly year-long investigation, highlights "a substantial and prolonged breakdown in budgetary control" at the state agency.

One of the agency's most significant follies is a case especially highlighted in the report: FÁS did spend more than € 600,000 on a television advertisement that was never broadcast.

Mr. Buckley also found that general spending in FÁS exceeded budgets by up to 66%.

Nearly a year ago, when the scandalous money-wasting of FÁS became public knowledge, he was given the task to investigate the agency. (see my entries of September 22nd & 23rd, 2008)

Between 2002 and 2008, FÁS spent over € 48 million alone on advertising and promotional activities. This is the largest advertising spend in the non-commercial state sector, and for most of the period audited Ireland had almost full employment. Which means the agency had hardly anything to do and only very few 'customers'.

The Comptroller & Auditor General also found that budgetary control in FÁS was "poor" and expenditure in this area exceeded budgets by 38%.

As well as the € 600,000 spent on the un-used television advertisement, the agency spent a further € 600,000 with no services at all delivered.

Criticising the wasteful expenditure of FÁS, John Buckley said that "public procurement requirements were not met".

Overall, the report finds that advertising and promotional activities lacked strategic direction and that much of the advertising was ineffective in increasing awareness of FÁS services.

On the basis of what is known by now, there are good reasons to abolish FÁS as an independent agency and to divide its obligations between two government departments: Education (for the training elements) and Enterprise, Trade & Employment (for the work-related and employment duties).

It would also be sensible to prosecute FÁS employees who were responsible for the enormous spending spree and the massive waste of taxpayers' money and try to re-coup as much of it as possible from guilty individuals.
But as things are in Ireland, this is rather unlikely. Those close to the government here get away with everything and are never punished. The ordinary Irish people are instead burdened with the costs of government follies and the many failures and mistakes of its countless agencies.
If one would not know better, one might think Ireland is still a feudal state in the Middle Ages.

The Emerald Islander

For further details about the scandals and wastefulness of FÁS see also my entries of November 22nd, 25th, 26th & 27th, 2008.

RTÉ transmits misleading Radio Ads again

In my opinion there is generally way too much advertisement in this world, but especially here in Ireland, which is highly over-commercialised in every possible way.

This goes so far that public service vehicles used by Waterford City Council carry stickers advertising the private company they are leased from. Ornamental standing stones with the names of town lands and housing estates always carry the name of a private company that paid for it, and there are - believe it or not - even public rubbish bins in our parks and on the streets that sport a small plaque, saying "sponsored by..." followed by the name of a local business.

One of my regular annoyances is that Radio Telefis Éireann (RTÉ), which is the sole recipient of the compulsory national TV licence money (currently € 160 per household per annum), also fills its programmes on both Radio and TV with a large amount of advertisement.
The whole purpose of having a TV licence is to give a broadcaster financial independence from vested interests, in order to make proper and independent programmes free of advertisement.

The BBC does that very well, but RTÉ does not. It takes the licence money, whose payment is actually enforced with drastic measures, including the arcane and almost Dickensian 'TV Licence Inspectors' who apparently "visit 18,000 premises every month". (That alone is a ridiculous and outrageous waste of money, energy and resources and deserves a separate article at some other time.) Watching TV in Ireland without having a TV licence is actually a criminal offence, and each month there are numerous people dragged into court rooms and fined for it. And a few, who do simply not have the money to pay either the licence or the fine, end up in prison, for nothing else than watching television.

Despite all this, the complete output of RTÉ - on both Radio and TV - is heavily commercialised and filled with constant advertisements. On top of that many programmes are also specifically sponsored by a company or product which is mentioned in extra trailers several time throughout the transmission of this programme.

I have turned my back on TV many years ago and only listen to Radio, so I cannot say in detail how much worse it is with RTÉ's TV programmes. But the advertisement content on RTÉ Radio is bad enough and higher than that of some commercial stations, which have no other income than advertisement.

Not enough that listeners are constantly bombarded with unwanted commercials which are even used to interrupt news bulletins, many of the ads transmitted by RTÉ are strictly speaking in breach of broadcasting rules as they are peddling clear lies or make incorrect statements about a company or product. But no-one (except me) seems to care or feel bothered.
Actually, as things are here, anyone can broadcast a complete tissue of lies and get away with it, as long as the last words of the ad are "terms and conditions apply". And it is quite telling that this phrase is the most common in Irish advertising, appearing in about two thirds of all adds I hear on RTÉ Radio. Most significantly they close all ads for banks, insurance companies and all sorts of other financial services.

But the crooks in the big multi-national companies and their henchmen (and women) in the large lying factories known as 'advertisement agencies' do not stop there. Now they even produce ads with clear and plain lies without attaching any verbal safety net at the end.
Not that this is the first time RTÉ has transmitted misleading ads. It happens ever so often, and one wonders if there is any control of the content at all before it goes out on air. Or perhaps it is all the same for RTÉ, as long as they get paid for peddling rubbish and spreading lies.

The latest example of that is a new ad for Opel cars, which I have heard on RTÉ Radio 1 today for the third time. It indicates that at least some US companies have by now realised that their uncritical support of the criminal Bush administration over the past eight years and their overall imperialist approach to marketing are doing some damage to their international sales figures, especially in Asia and Europe.
So now they have decided to use even obvious lies to win over the uninformed and truly gullible elements of the Irish population, which are quite significant in numbers.

This new ad opens with introducing Opel as "a German company", and that is a clear and plain lie. But for many it sounds alright nevertheless, because Opel started as a German company.

Let us look at the facts: The Opel GmbH was indeed founded in Germany 146 years ago, on January 21st, 1863. It first produced various household goods, but soon specialised in sewing machines. By 1895, the year company founder Adam Opel died, they were the largest maker of sewing machines in Europe and also produced each year 2000 bicycles, then a novelty form of transport that was gaining popularity.
Three years later Opel began also building cars, first in partnership with a German inventor and then with a French engineering company. In 1906 they developed their first own model, and by 1913 Opel was the largest car manufacturer in Germany.

After World War I things looked more dire, even though Opel was still the leading car brand in a devastated Germany. But the economic crisis of the late 1920s with hyper-inflation and political instability ruined many a German business forever.
In 1929 Opel was taken over by General Motors of Detroit, USA, the largest car maker in the world then and now.

So even though Opel began as a German company and still has production facilities there, it is actually a 100% American firm and has been for the past 80 years. To call it now "a German company" in an ad for the Irish market is at best misleading, at worst a plain lie. It has not been done in the past, as long as US cars were seen as somehow desireable here. But now, that many people have turned their backs on the USA and anything American for various reasons, suddenly General Motors declares Opel "a German company", hoping to cash in on the fact that Germany has a long, unbroken and exceptional reputation for engineering excellence.

Well, I do not wish to influence anyone here, and I believe that people make up their own minds in any way they see fit. Personally I would never buy or drive an Opel car, nor any other US car, knowing of the way General Motors runs its business (and has been supporting George W. Bush and other leading Republicans for many years with vast sums of money). And though GM is the worst of the lot, Ford and Chrysler are not much better than their larger rival. However, it is not for me to tell you what car to buy and drive. I just hope you know what you are doing and whom you support with your money.

But I strongly resent the fact that RTÉ, our national broadcaster, is offering itself as a willing accomplice to another deliberate tissue of American lies. I am certain that before this current crisis is over we will see many changes in many areas, including broadcasting. And I can assure you - and RTÉ - that I have an excellent memory.

The Emerald Islander

RTÉ - Having our Cake and eat it

If you read this in the USA, you will probably wonder what all the fuss is about, as your life is already completely dominated by advertisement for a long time and you probably don't even notice them any more as an intrusion into your privacy. There is no TV or radio station in the United States that is not controlled by private interests, and every programme is crammed with advertisements to the hilt. Often the actual programme parts are seen as not more than elements to fill the spaces between the ads.

If you are in the UK, you are lucky and privileged to have the BBC, which is undoubtedly the best and most informative broadcaster in the world. There are no ads on the BBC, which is financed through a TV licence fee, payable by everyone who has a television set. (If you only listen to radio, as I do, it is free of charge and still without ads.) There are also many commercial stations in the UK, financed through ads, so the people have a choice, which they don't have in the USA.

In most European countries there is a mixed system, with public broadcasters and private stations. While the latter are financed entirely from advertisement revenue, the amount of ads carried by the public stations is strictly limited. In some countries the public stations are - like the BBC - totally ad-free.

Not so in Ireland. Here we also have a mixed system with private commercial stations, most of them for a limited local area, and the national broadcaster Radio Telefis Éireann (RTÉ). Like the BBC in Britain, RTÉ has a TV licence, while listening to radio is free. But in contrast to the BBC, the programmes of RTÉ - on radio and TV - are constantly interrupted by commercial advertisement. Not even the main news are exempt from that, which in my opinion shows real greed. It is a typical case of having one's cake and eat it. And it annoys me immensely.

In general RTÉ is not a bad station, and many of their programmes are well made, informative and often interesting to listen to. If there were not the constant ad breaks, filled with the most mind-numbing and annoying dribble, I would listen a lot more to RTÉ. (I don't watch TV and don't even have a television set.)
But after a while with RTÉ, I usually cannot bear it any longer and switch over to the BBC.

To avoid misunderstandings: I do not object to advertisement in general. It has its place in a free society, and at times it can actually be helpful and informative. But like with everything - too much of even the best makes it eventually unwanted and bad.
There is also the general question if a station that charges a TV licence fee should not be required to broadcast ad-free programmes, as the BBC does.
In Belgium a similar situation as the Irish was challenged in the High Court, and subsequently the public broadcaster had to decide: either TV licence, or advertisement. They chose the latter, and Belgian TV is now free of charge.

But RTÉ seems to be on a roll. Not enough that they bombard us with commercials all the time, they add self-promotional ads to their programmes as well. The most annoying of them all are the smug and arrogant little trailers that threaten people with the "TV licence inspector" (even on radio, which does not require a licence). Yes, as ridiculous as it is in the fully electronic and computerised 21st century, An Post (the Irish postal service) still employs people who go around the country, knocking on people's doors and demanding to see the TV licence. And as the system is arrogant, self-serving and badly organised, they often call on people (like me) who do not have a TV and therefore need no licence. You would not believe how arrogant they are, assuming automatically that everyone must have a television set.

I wonder how many other people - apart from myself - notice that most of the commercial ads broadcast on RTÉ radio (I cannot speak about TV, as I don't watch it, but I presume it is the same there) are actually nebulous, deceptive and often misleading. In fact, they can really say and promise anything they want in an ad - even if it is completely untrue - as long as they close with the often heard phrase: "Terms and conditions apply."
What these terms and conditions actually are and how they bind the interested customer, one will only discover when one contacts the company. Usually they are far less attractive than the promises made in the ad.

There is also the question if RTÉ vets advertisement before broadcasting it. If they do, it seems to be done not very thoroughly. For example, there appears an ad on RTÉ radio now for some time that promotes a product "to stimulate the regrowth of hair". Like many other folically challenged men I would theoretically be interested in such a remedy. But then again, if one knows that there simply is no way to regrow lost hair, no matter what one tries or does, the whole ad campaign is exposed as a scam. And as the voices on this particular ad (there are two versions, one for women and one for men) are distinctly English with a good bit of cockney accent, I presume that it is another attempt to sell a bad British product to the gullible 'colonials' here in Ireland.
The real give-away clue that exposes this particular campaign as a scam is at the end of the message. "Stick with it for at least six months," the speaker says. Well, if you do and realise that the stuff is not working and you still haven't got any new hair after six months, the company will have made more than enough money from you, buying their product for half a year.

Now and then ads with a special promotion that runs until a certain date are still appearing on air after the date has passed. I don't know if this is deliberate or just sloppy scheduling, but it is wrong anyway. Only yesterday I heard a promotional ad for Opel cars, saying that the promotion "ends on September 20th". But yesterday was already the 21st! (This sort of thing does not happen often, but it does and shouldn't.)

Especially annoying I find the ads for banks and insurance companies, the very people whose reckless speculations and gambling have caused the current global economic crisis.
They always start with a sensation or a big promise, then fall into financial jargon and always end with the - legally required - information about the firms status, which is "regulated by the financial regulator". This final part of the ad is usually spoken much faster than the rest of the ad, and often rattled down in the same way many Irish Catholics would rattle down a badly said rosary. That really says it all, tells us how serious the financial industry takes the "regulator". Given the situation we find ourselves in now, one does really wonder who this "regulator" is and what he or she is doing. Obviously not a lot.

Similar "regulators" exist for other industries, but they are not doing much either. And when they appear in the news, then only to give a quiet nod to price increases, like the exorbitant and unjustified rise of the electricity price in Ireland. This gives the Electrical Supply Board (ESB) an almost unlimited licence to print money, and we all are robbed blind and can do absolutely nothing about it (as we all need electricity nowadays).

But this is not about the ESB and electricity (I wrote about them already), but about advertisement, and especially ads on RTÉ. There are simply too many of them, and if there are more people like me, then our national broadcaster is loosing potential listeners (and viewers) as a result of this advertisement overdrive. Less would be more, make better programmes and attract more listeners (and viewers). But as things are, I expect that they will just carry on as usual. They live in a little world of their own, up there in Dublin 4, and don't give a hoot about the rest of us. If we listen to their programmes or not, they still get paid those huge salaries that sets them apart from ordinary people. But that was the same with the smug and arrogant gamblers in the US investment banks, until ... the whole system imploded.

The Emerald Islander

Is it all a Bank's Fault?

The unfriendly weather we are encountering now already for weeks gets on the nerves of the Irish people. Even on this island, world-wide known as a rainy place, at least the imperial months of July and August (both named after Roman rulers) are usually warm, friendly and bring us sunshine.

Not so last years and this year. The Irish 'summer' weather consists now of heavy cloud cover, cool temperatures, storms and long and heavy spells of rain, often torrential. Along come flooding and damage to property and installations, canceled ferry sailings and many washed-out summer events like village feasts, agricultural shows and sports matches. Today a popular horse race meeting not far from here had to be canceled, because torrential rain had turned the racecourse into a lake. To make life really miserable on a Sunday, we also had a rather bad thunderstorm today.

Many cannot understand this crazy weather and wonder what might cause it and who or what is in essence responsible for it. Well, we all have meanwhile heard more than enough about the global climate change, even though leading politicians (like George W. Bush) and business leaders still refuse to "believe" it, as it it were some religious doctrine. I have written about it meanwhile several times as well, and I will not repeat my points here.

This is just a short entry, written with a twinkle and a smile. On a popular RTE radio programme today a studio guest, who happens to be a leading Irish banker, made an interesting remark, tongue firmly in cheek. He said that his bank started to sponsor the weather forecast on RTE radio some weeks ago, and ever since it has practically not stopped raining.

Now quite a lot of people - and this is not a joke - write and phone in to the bank and complain. It is of course impossible to prove such a strange theory. So the sponsorship continues and every time one hears a weather forecast on RTE, it is "sponsored by" or "in connection with" this bank.

But I do wonder why anyone would want to sponsor the weather forecast - of all things - and pay good money for the - at least verbal - association with bad weather. There are much easier ways to throw away large sums of money, if one wishes to do that.

Why sponsor a weather forecast at all? Do you think RTE would not have a weather forecast on radio or TV if no-one would sponsor it?

Personally I think there should be no sponsorship or advertisement linked to it. The weather is a very important factor for everyone, so it should be presented in a clear, factual and informative way, with no commercial connections.

There is already more than enough advertisement on radio and TV, interrupting programmes willy-nilly with senseless, stupid and often outright offensive advertisement. Maybe RTE could leave the weather and its forecast alone and un-sponsored in the future, and maybe - one hopes at least - the weather would be back to its old normality.
And of course one could approach the matter also from the other side: If no bank or company is daft enough to sponsor the weather forecast, it will just be a piece of meteorological information. And - as a side effect - people would stop blaming the sponsor for all the bad Irish summers...

The Emerald Islander

Give us a Pause (not Menopause)

As I started writing about RTÉ and Pat Kenny early this morning, I thought I just carry on doing it. Just joking. But I am actually listening to his radio show right now while I write this (as I do quite often in the morning). And two things I heard made me start this post.

On a day when Pat talked a lot about urban renewal and, right now, also about torture, there were suddenly two unusual musical intermezzos, promoting an evening with "Music from the Movies" at the National Concert Hall in Dublin tomorrow night. Alright, it is the RTÉ Concert Orchestra that is playing there, and RTÉ is always very good at blowing its own trumpet. No problem. So have the promotional message and one piece of music. But two? Within the same hour? They must be very worried about audience numbers at the NCH, otherwise such a heavy promotion would not happen. If the show were sold out (like the one with the Soweto Gospel Choir next Monday), you would hear not a word from Pat or anyone else on air.

So, please, RTÉ, give us a break from ad breaks and heavy promotions! There is already more than enough commercial advertisement on Irish radio and TV channels. Too much, actually, for my taste. That's why I don't listen as often to RTÉ as I would like to and otherwise would do. But after a few hours I am just so annoyed by the constant ad breaks - even in the main news programmes - that I switch over to the BBC. There the license fee that people in the UK pay for the service guarantees the transmission of ad-free programmes, on all their radio and TV channels.

Here in Ireland we are forced to pay a license fee, and on top of it we are also force-fed a heavy diet of commercials by RTÉ, whose on-air advertisement is one of the densest in Europe. Not to mention the additional money the ladies and gentlemen in Donnybrook receive from sponsorship deals, as almost every TV programme is now "in association with" one big company or sponsored by another. And some of the radio programmes - like Weekend Sport, for example - are going down the same slippery road. Please, once again, press the button and give us a pause from such heavy bombardment with ads!

But when I say pause I mean just simply that, and not a menopause. The first reason for sitting down in front of my computer and writing this post was another ad during Pat Kenny's radio show this morning, promoting - wait for it - "Menopause - The Musical", starring Twink and Linda Martin. This show has apparently been "very successful in Dublin" and is now sent on tour around the country, so that we - the hicks in the sticks - can get a little glimpse at the capital's glamour, too.

Well, as far as I am concerned, you can keep your musicals in Dublin, and especially one like this. How tacky can you get? And how low must someone be sinking before being associated with this kind of rubbish?
Since I had never heard of it, I did a little research and found out that this "musical" originally comes (like most sub-cultural nonsense) from the USA and was written by one Jenny Linder (never heard that name before either). And yes, it apparently was shown for some time at the Tivoli Theatre in Dublin, which charged € 30 for a ticket!

According to its own promotional text, "Menopause - The Musical has been entertaining and inspiring women around the world since 2001, poking fun at hot flashes, memory loss, mood swings, wrinkles, night sweats and eating binges. Set in a department store, it tells the story of four women with nothing in common but a black lace bra and a roller-coaster of hormones".
There must be something wrong with the mindset of people who would pay € 30 to see that!
You could give me a free ticket and I would not go, as I have better and more important things to do with my time.

I am disgusted that RTÉ promotes things like this on air. It is bad enough that it takes place at all, and if female performers of a certain age - like Adele King (known as "Twink") and Linda Martin - can no longer find any other work, it might well be time for them to retire gracefully.

The Emerald Islander